I write to you in defense of my good friend, Mr. Gerry Matatics, whom I
respect and admire as a faithful Catholic, a devoted husband and father, and a
man of genius. I was privileged to become Gerry's friend some two years ago, in
the process of investigating and finding to be false - outrageously false -
certain public accusations against his Catholic orthodoxy by Mr. Karl Keating.

I have learned that Mr. Keating advised you to shun Gerry's upcoming speaking
tour in Oxford and Cambridge. Unlike so many others who have heard Mr. Keating's
allegations, however, you had the decency to telephone Gerry to hear his side of
the story. Thus I have addressed this apologia to you, confident that you will
give it a fair reading and convey the truth about Gerry to your fellow Catholics
in England.

The Parties to the Controversy

Mr. Keating, as you know, heads a lay apologetical organization in San Diego,
California called "Catholic Answers," which he founded some time ago in
preference to the practice of law. He also edits the organization's publication,
This Rock magazine, which essentially serves as his alter ego, as does
the organization itself.

What you (and many other Catholics) may not know is that Gerry was once
employed as an apologist by Catholic Answers (whose income soared on
the strength of Gerry's phenomenal speaking ability), but quit in 1991 to find
more gainful employment for the support of his wife, Leslie, and their seven
children. This decision did not please Mr. Keating, as I will discuss in more
detail below.

For some reason, Mr. Keating later decided that it was his responsibility to
monitor Gerry's theological views and interpret them for the world. In a rather
vainglorious evocation of the Agony in the Garden, Mr. Keating publicly
professed great anguish over the task he had assigned to himself: "This is
not something I look forward to doing; it is something I prayed would pass me
by." [This Rock, "March" '95, p. 22-23]

Once you have finished reading this letter, I hope you will agree that
perhaps Mr. Keating should have prayed a bit harder.

Mr. Keating Will Not Relent

I should note at the outset that although I am writing to you in defense of
Gerry Matatics I was once a great supporter of Mr. Keating and his work, having
sent a large donation to Catholic Answers and a congratulatory letter
to Mr. Keating not long before he began what I can only call his senseless
vendetta against Gerry - a vendetta which, in my estimation, has greatly
diminished Mr. Keating's credibility and that of his organization.

I had hoped that Mr. Keating's accusations had been laid to rest by the
testimony of a number of prominent Catholics who came to Gerry's defense,
including several members of this Association's Advisory Board and, most
telling, Father Brian Harrison, O.S., a contributor to Mr. Keating's own
magazine. It was Father Harrison who, being fully aware of Mr. Keating's litany
of allegations, recently endorsed Gerry as follows: " . . . Gerry is one of the
few solidly orthodox Scripture scholars we have left in the Church today. His
zeal, talents, scholarship and speaking ability in this area are something we
cannot afford to do without. Whatever his mistakes or indiscretions may have
been, he is definitely 'in' the Catholic Church, and his voice needs to be heard
widely . . ." [Letter to Al Matt, Editor of The Wanderer, dated 13 March 1996]

Despite this sort of testimony, it appears that Mr. Keating has no intention
of relenting. I understand that in a recent telephone conversation, Mr. Keating
told you that he "stands by every word" of his accusations - every word! -
retracts nothing he has written or said against Gerry (despite any and all
testimony to the contrary), and is not in favor of Catholics attending Gerry's
upcoming speaking tour in England because, in his opinion, Gerry is not an
orthodox Catholic.

It is this latest outrage by Mr. Keating which has impelled me to send you
this open letter, because it seems that no sense of charity, not even mere
gentlemanly restraint, is counseling Mr. Keating to put his allegations to rest,
to allow Gerry to go on with his life as a Catholic speaker and lecturer - to
admit, at least, that his judgment of the man is not infallible and can safely
be ignored by other Catholics who admire Gerry's abilities and can learn from
him.

And so, in this letter I will come to Gerry's defense, giving you the benefit
of my encounters with Mr. Keating over the course of this controversy, and
demonstrating why his accusations should be consigned to the trash heap of
discredited calumnies, never again to be repeated by any decent Catholic.

In particular, I will demonstrate that Mr. Keating: is no objective
journalist in this case, but someone with a very large axe to grind; has falsely
characterized Gerry's theological views to the public, with no evidence to
support his characterization; has deliberately suppressed a mass of evidence
which negates his trumped-up charges of heterodoxy, refusing to publish even a
letter to the editor from Gerry in response to the charges, or to disclose to
his readers any portion of his three-hour interview with Gerry in which Gerry
demolished every accusation that Keating has made; has ruthlessly pounced upon
Gerry's admitted lapses in prudential judgment, trumpeting them to the public in
a disgusting display of wanton detraction, with no regard for the impact on
Gerry, his wife Leslie, and their seven children, and no attempt whatsoever at
the private fraternal correction of any "errors" he claims to have detected in
Gerry's thinking.

I will demonstrate, overall, that Mr. Keating's attitude toward his former
employee is far removed from a charitable concern for the welfare of Gerry's
soul, or "the good of the Church" which he piously invokes to justify his
outrageous conduct in this affair. I will demonstrate that the attitude of Mr.
Keating toward Gerry Matatics is best expressed in his own venomous remark,
uttered in response to Gerry's just complaint about the damage Mr. Keating had
inflicted on his livelihood as a Catholic speaker and lecturer: "We've all
heard the sob stories, Gerry."

For the sake of justice, Mr. Wells, I urge you to circulate this letter as
widely as possible, in the hope that my testimony will undo some of the damage
Mr. Keating has perversely inflicted, and continues to inflict, on Gerry's good
name both here and abroad.

I Once Believed Mr. Keating's Accusations

As I've already noted, I was an admirer of Mr. Keating and his work before
this controversy arose. Indeed, so great was my respect for Mr. Keating, and my
trust in his opinions, that when I read his statements in an interview in the
Wanderer of February 16, 1995, that "Gerry Matatics is a sad example of how
schism does lead to heresy very quickly." [p. 7] and "Don't follow the
pied pipers out of the Church . . . Gerry Matatics and the others are leading
people to schism and heresy." [Id.] it never occurred to me to doubt his
accusations. I simply shook my head and thought to myself: "Poor Gerry, he
must have gone off the deep end."

Yes, I believed Mr. Keating - at least until I heard Gerry's side of the
story, which Mr. Keating has adamantly refused to publish. The crime in this
case is that so many other people believed Mr. Keating as well, and still
believe him, despite his failure to produce any proof that Gerry Matatics is a
schismatic and a heretic, that he has led anyone else into schism and heresy, or
indeed that he holds any view which constitutes an error against the Faith.

My Involvement in the Controversy

Soon after I read Mr. Keating's devastating accusations in the Wanderer, I
was surprised to receive a telephone call from Gerry. At the time I knew him
only slightly, but was a great admirer of his work as well, having listened to
his conversion story and many of his other audio tapes. My admiration only
increased when I attended an address Gerry gave at Princeton University - an
oration so powerful that a room full of some of America's most elite
"Ivy-league" students was visibly awed by it. It was probably the most brilliant
apologia for the Faith that I have ever heard.

Gerry asked if my organization would help him deal with libelous accusations
by Mr. Keating in The Wanderer and the "November" 1994 issue of This Rock
magazine, which made its appearance some time in January 1995. The article in
This Rock had accused Gerry of holding to the view of the late Father Leonard
Feeney that no one who is not a formal member of the Catholic Church can be
saved.

Gerry told me that Keating's accusations of "Feeneyism," schism and heresy
were utterly false and had nearly ruined his apostolate, causing him to lose
numerous speaking engagements around the country as reflected in cancellation
letters citing Keating's statements in This Rock and The Wanderer.

Gerry explained that he had once worked for Mr. Keating at Catholic Answers,
but had left in 1991 when Mr. Keating informed him that he was not going to pay
promised compensation without which the Matatics family could not afford to live
in San Diego, where they had relocated on the strength of Mr. Keating's
financial promises.

Gerry recounted how Mr. Keating had begun to disparage him privately almost
immediately after he left Catholic Answers, even though (as Keating himself
later admitted in This Rock) Gerry continued to say good things about Catholic
Answers and assisted in some of its work gratis after his departure.

Gerry told me, for example, how a written employment offer by the Bishop of
Peoria, Illinois (a copy of which I have in my files) was suddenly withdrawn
after the Bishop spoke with Mr. Keating. The Bishop told Gerry that Keating had
recommended against the hire, describing Gerry as a maverick who could not be
expected to take direction from the Bishop.

Gerry described how Mr. Keating's private disparagement had now blossomed
into false public accusations of heterodoxy based on gross misrepresentations of
Gerry's theological views, which Keating was discussing in print without any
effort to interview Gerry for his side of the story.

We discussed Gerry's views on various matters of the Faith, and I found them
to be nothing more or less than the views of a typical "traditionalist" Catholic
in full communion with Rome, exercising his right under John Paul II's 1988
apostolic letter Ecclesia Dei (not to mention the immemorial custom of
the Church) to abstain from the new liturgy, while not denying its essential
validity as a rite of Mass. In this regard, Gerry is no different from the
priests of the papally-chartered Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, at whose
seminary he teaches Sacred Scripture, and innumerable other orthodox Catholics
who feel that they cannot worship in peace in the new rite.

Keating Flounders On Line

After Gerry presented his side of the story and asked for my help, I went
"online" in February-March of 1995 and exchanged messages with Mr. Keating on a
public electronic bulletin board, to see for myself what evidence he had for his
charges. As the exchange wore on, I was surprised, then outraged, to find that
the man had no evidence whatsoever to support the public accusation of schism
and heresy he had just made in The Wanderer. What I got instead of evidence were
Mr. Keating's impressions of Gerry's theological views, based on two phrases
from the private remarks he had quoted in The Wanderer, and a couple of
exceedingly vague third and fourth-party anecdotes not involving any specific
statements by Gerry.

Mr. Keating was unable during our entire exchange to provide even a single
quotation from the writings or speeches of Gerry Matatics, or even his private
remarks, which demonstrates that Gerry espouses heresy or has broken communion
with the Holy Catholic Church. Nor could Mr. Keating supply the name of a single
Catholic being led out of the Church by Gerry, whom he had just publicly
condemned as a "pied piper" seducing people into schism and heresy.

In short, I was amazed that Mr. Keating had seen fit to charge a fellow
Catholic with schism and heresy in a major Catholic newspaper without any
substantial evidence, let alone conclusive evidence, for such a damning
accusation.

Mr. Keating Backpedals, But Refuses to Retract

As it became obvious during our exchange that he had no proof whatever that
Gerry is a "sad example of how schism does lead to heresy very
quickly," and a "pied piper . . . leading people out of the
Church," Mr. Keating began to backpedal. He tried to deny that his words in
the Wanderer meant what they so plainly stated. He even began to ventilate
entirely new charges, completely unrelated to matters of Faith - complaints
about Gerry's advertising, for example - as if to say that it did not matter how
he impeached Gerry, so long as he could find some grounds on which to impeach
him.

When I finally demanded - with no little exasperation - that Mr. Keating
either show where Gerry had actually said something contrary to the Faith or
else retract his charges, Mr. Keating replied that he was in the process of
investigating Gerry's views via interviews with various people, and would report
the results of his investigation in an upcoming issue of This Rock. In other
words, Mr. Keating was conducting an investigation of his charges after he had
already publicized them in a major Catholic newspaper and the November 1994
issue of This Rock! On this note our online exchange ended, and the controversy
moved into its next phase.

Mr. Keating Shifts to New Charges

After my online exchange with Mr. Keating, he continued backpedaling away
from his original accusation of schism and heresy, but without having the
decency to admit that he could not prove it. Instead, in the March 1995 issue of
This Rock, which actually made its appearance some time in June, Mr. Keating
tried to rewrite what he had said in The Wanderer, substituting a new accusation
in its place: "The editorial [in Roman Catholic Observer] criticized us for
comments made in an interview in The Wanderer of February 16. At the end of that
interview I remarked that frustrated Catholics should not follow 'pied pipers'
who may lead them out of the Church . . . I went on to say that Gerry Matatics
in particular was leading people into error." [p. 20][my emphasis]

Notice how the explicit charge of schism and heresy has been quietly dropped
in the retelling - but not retracted - and replaced by the claim that Gerry is -
leading people into error (which people, and which error?), rather than heresy
and schism. Mr. Keating's attempt to soften his original accusation can only be
viewed as a tacit admission that it was untenable as formulated.

Notice also how Mr. Keating attributes his remarks in The Wanderer to "us."
This is a reference to co-interviewee and former Catholic Answers staffer Pat
Madrid - who, unlike Mr. Keating, declined to condemn anyone by name during the
interview. I note here that Mr. Madrid quit Catholic Answers soon after Mr.
Keating began attacking Gerry in the Catholic press, and that he has told me and
Gerry on several occasions that he refused to have any part in Mr. Keating's
actions.

Most recently, for example, Mr. Madrid told Gerry on America On Line that he
had never joined in the "Matatics piñata party" at Catholic Answers. A
"piñata", for those who may not know, is papîer maché doll stuffed with
candy, which blindfolded Mexican children gleefully bash with sticks at birthday
parties, until it breaks open and disgorges the candy. The analogy to a
blindfolded child happily bashing something with a stick is most apt.

As you might expect, the online exchange and the "March" 1995 issue of This
Rock convinced me that Mr. Keating had not made his charges in good faith, but
rather with evident malice toward his target. Mr. Keating was simply too
stiff-necked to retract his untenable public accusation of schism and heresy, no
matter how much harm it had caused to Gerry, his family and his apostolate.

My admiration for Mr. Keating was replaced by righteous indignation, and a
determination to help Gerry deal with this obstinate calumniator in any way that
I could.

The Charges Multiply without Proof

By May 1995, some two months after the Wanderer interview, Mr. Keating had
written no fewer than three articles concerning the theological views of Gerry
Matatics - two in This Rock and one in the now-defunct Roman Catholic Observer -
with two more yet to be written. In these articles Mr. Keating had accused Gerry
of a truly astonishing array of alleged delicts against the Faith, including:
"Feeneyism," "rigorism," "Lefevbrism," suspected "sede vacantism," denying the
validity of the New Mass, holding that the Catechism of the Catholic Church
contains errors and, of course, the original charges of schism and heresy.

Amazingly, Mr. Keating had yet to interview the man whose theology he had
been discussing in print for the past six months. Nor had he provided in these
three articles a single quotation from any of Gerry's speeches or writings which
demonstrates that Gerry had embraced any of these alleged errors.

Mr. Keating's slipshod approach to indicting Gerry can be illustrated by the
following three examples taken from the articles in question.

Example #1: "Some, such as Gerry Matatics, seem to have few positive
words for the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which they believe contains
errors on such topics as salvation." [This Rock, Nov. 1994, p.8]

Notice the verbal sleight-of-hand at work here: Keating does not claim that
Gerry actually said the Catechism contains errors, for indeed Gerry has never
said anything of the kind (nor does he believe it, as he has told Keating more
than once). Rather, Mr. Keating asserts that Gerry "believes" the Catechism
contains errors because Gerry has few "positive words" to say about it. Thus,
Mr. Keating attempts to "prove" what Gerry believes by what Gerry has not said!
What sort of trickery is this? And what on earth does Mr. Keating mean by
"errors on such topics as salvation." Precisely which topics, Mr. Keating,
and which errors? He never says.

The careless or simply credulous reader of This Rock might well fail to
notice that Mr. Keating does not offer even a soupçon of evidence for his charge
that Gerry holds that there are errors in the new Catechism. Mr. Keating creates
the desired impression in the minds of his readers, then quietly moves along
without leaving behind any substance.

Example #2: "Mr. Matatics is now telling people that it would be a sin
for him to attend the new Mass . . . He believes it would be a sin because he
believes the Novus Ordo is invalid, even when said by a rightly intentioned
priest who follows the missal to the letter." [This Rock, "March" 1995, p.
23]

Here we see Mr. Keating's shameless exploitation of a private remark, which
Gerry made the mistake of confiding to Mr. Keating during a telephone
conversation in January 1995. Mr. Keating fails to mention that during this same
conversation Gerry was careful to stress the following points, lest his remark
be misinterpreted: that he was not denying the validity of the new Mass; that
his own conscientious avoidance of the new Mass was for entirely subjective
reasons, obviously binding on no one but himself; that his misgivings related
primarily to the infamous ICEL English translation used in America, not the
normative Latin text of the Mass of Paul VI. (1) that he had not shared his
misgivings with anyone in the course of his ministry, and had not counseled
anyone to avoid the new Mass.

Violating a confidence, Keating trumpeted Gerry's private remark to the
public in This Rock, placing upon it the false construction that Gerry denies
the validity of the new Mass - precisely the opposite of what Gerry had said! In
the quoted passage Keating makes it appear that Gerry himself had said that he
denies the validity of the new Mass, when this is merely Keating's deceptive
gloss on Gerry's actual words.

Notice also how Mr. Keating claims that Gerry is "telling people" that it
would be a sin for him to attend the new Mass, when in fact he had told only
Keating and had made it clear to Keating that he had told no one else. (Much to
Gerry's chagrin, Keating revealed in This Rock that his "colleagues" had been
listening in on the conversation without Gerry's knowledge.) Keating then uses
the phrase "telling people" to link Gerry's private remark about his abstention
from the new Mass to the false impression that Gerry has been traveling about
the country telling everyone who will listen that the new Mass is invalid - when
he had not even said that to Keating.

All in all, you can see that Keating has gotten quite a bit of mileage out of
a single private remark in a telephone conversation Gerry did not expect to
become public record. Gerry should have realized that by unburdening himself to
Keating, he was only assisting the very prosecutor who wished to indict him, not
a charitable fellow Catholic with Gerry's best interest in heart. As Keating
himself admits in This Rock, he asked Gerry to repeat his remark so that he
could write it down, word for word. Isn't that what prosecutors do?

This is nothing but an outright falsehood. Keating, in his usual manner,
fails to substantiate the accusation with a single quotation from Gerry's
writings or speeches. And with good reason: Gerry has never subscribed to the
position of the late Father Leonard Feeney on salvation outside the Catholic
Church. On the contrary, Gerry has told Mr. Keating again and again since this
charge first appeared in the "November" issue of This Rock that he does not
agree with the late Father Feeney's denial of baptism of blood and baptism of
desire, and recognizes that both doctrines are taught by the Magisterium.

In fact, Gerry and I recently defended baptism of blood and baptism of desire
in a debate against two "Feeneyites" in South Bend, Indiana. The debate was
tape-recorded and has been distributed throughout the United States, and I am
told that Keating is aware of the tapes. Ironically, Gerry and I prepared for
the debate using the sources Gerry himself had compiled to prove both doctrines
from Magisterial teaching, including the Catechism of St. Pius X (2).

It is simply outrageous that Mr. Keating continues to "stand by" a charge
which he must know is a complete canard - like the original charge of schism and
heresy he obstinately refuses to retract.

A Fraternal Encounter

One of the first things I did to help Gerry deal with Mr. Keating was to
arrange a meeting between Gerry and a number of prominent Catholics who
appreciated Gerry's great gifts and were concerned about Mr. Keating's
ever-expanding litany of accusations against his orthodoxy.

The meeting took place on May 20, 1995, at the home of Howard J. Walsh in
Saddle River, New Jersey. Mr. Walsh may be known to you as the founder of Keep
the Faith, Inc., an apostolate which has been distributing solidly orthodox
Catholic audio and video tapes throughout the world for over 25 years, including
Bishop Sheen's radio and television shows and, more recently, lectures by Dr.
William Marra and Gerry's own lectures on Sacred Scripture.

The meeting occurred during a reception in honor of Cardinal Alfons Stickler
of Rome, who was in the United States to offer a much-publicized Pontifical
Tridentine High Mass in Manhattan the next day (the first such Mass in Manhattan
since Vatican II). Gerry was privileged to meet the Cardinal and to discuss his
theological views, and Keating's accusations, with a number of the guests at the
reception, including Father Brian Harrison, O.S., Father William F. Ashley,
Father John Perricone, Count Neri Capponi, Dr. William A. Marra, and Mr.
Keating's own friend, Roger McCaffrey, the publisher of Latin Mass and Sursum
Corda magazines. I too was present.

The purpose of the meeting was not to indict Gerry - as Keating had already
done without even interviewing him - but to dialogue with the man and see for
ourselves if indeed any serious errors had cropped up in his thinking. The
interest of those who spoke with Gerry that evening was fraternal correction, if
necessary, not the transcription of private remarks for publication in
sensational magazine articles and interviews in the Catholic press.

The results of the meeting were entirely positive. Quite simply, we all
satisfied ourselves that Gerry is not a "Feeneyite;" does not deny the validity
of the new Mass; is not a "Lefebvrite" (but on the contrary deplores the illicit
consecrations by Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988, even though he, like the rest of
us, is much in sympathy with Lefebvre's principled opposition to the rise of
neo-modernist forces in the Church after Vatican II); is not a "sedevacantist;"
but acknowledges John Paul II as his Pope, and had in fact appealed to the
Pope's authority in his own newsletter from the Fall of 1994. (3)

On this last point it must be said that our discussions with Gerry that
evening did reveal that he had been quite imprudent in airing his speculations
about whether there was any weight to the "sede vacantist" hypothesis advanced
by those who claim that some of John Paul II's unprecedented actions mean that
he has lost his seat on account of "heresy" (4). [Those who assert papal
"heresy" refer to a number of unprecedented actions by the current Pope which
have certainly disturbed many of the faithful, including the altar girl
permission, the interfaith prayer meeting at Assisi, the appearance at the
Synagogue in Rome, the address from the Lutheran pulpit, the new permission for
intercommunion by Protestants in some cases, the approval of an aboriginal
"smoking ritual" in place of the Confiteor at a papal Mass, the reading of the
Epistle by a bare-breasted woman at another papal Mass, and so forth.]

Now, anyone who knows Gerry knows that he is a thinker, who reads and studies
a question exhaustively before he disposes of it, discussing it with anyone who
will listen. It was this very habit of insisting upon getting to the bottom of a
question that led Gerry into the Catholic Church. From his reading on the
subject of sede vacantism Gerry knew (as Keating apparently does not) that two
doctors of the Church - St. Robert Bellarmine and St. Alphonsus Liguori - had
taught the theoretical possibility that a Pope could lose his seat through
heresy, and that far from being a forbidden theory (as Mr. Keating seems to
think it is), the loss of the papal throne through heresy is routinely listed in
theology textbooks as one of the possible causes of a vacancy in the Petrine
office.

Thus, when he met with us on May 20th, Gerry, being Gerry, was looking for
sound arguments to refute the sede vacantist theory, not simply a declaration
that sede vacantists are kooks whose position should be rejected without
examination.

Suffice it to say that Gerry came away from our meeting with his questions
about the sede vacantist position resolved. Father Harrison in particular
demonstrated that the theory of sede vacantism had never been successfully
defended in practical application, that no Pope had ever been shown to have lost
his seat through heresy. He noted that the actions of the current Pope which
have disturbed many of the faithful are not "heretical" because none of them
involves the obstinate denial of any article of divine and Catholic faith [Can.
751], so that today's sede vacantists have utterly failed to prove their case.
Furthermore, the theory of sede vacantism is largely academic, since no one can
judge the Pope. I myself pointed out to Gerry that Bellarmine and Liguori both
held that despite the theoretical possibility of a heretical Pope, one should
piously presume - as indeed Gerry does - that God would never allow a reigning
Pope to become a heretic.

Unfortunately, Gerry's intellectual habit of open and exhaustive
investigation did not serve him well in this case. He naively believed that
he could dialogue with sede vacantists, speak on neutral topics at one of their
venues in Washington State, and even teach them Sacred Scripture without
incurring any harm to his ministry. He reasoned, not implausibly, that he was no
more endorsing their beliefs by speaking with them and to them, than the Pope
had endorsed the beliefs of those he addressed at the Synagogue of Rome, the
Lutheran church, or the interfaith prayer meeting at Assisi.

Certainly if Gerry had been conducting his examination of the sede vacantist
position entirely among friends, he would have had nothing to suffer beyond the
kind of private fraternal correction which Catholics are supposed to provide to
each other, and which he readily accepted at the May 20th meeting. But what
Gerry did not appreciate was that in the hands of someone who was not charitably
disposed toward him - namely, Mr. Keating - his indiscretions would become
weapons for the destruction of his good name, providing ammunition for public
exposés in articles and interviews issued by a man who had no interest in
rendering private fraternal correction, or even interviewing the subject of his
journalistic attacks before rushing into print.

At any rate, none of us left the May 20th meeting believing that Gerry
Matatics was anything but a Catholic in good standing, no matter what his
indiscretions had been on the sede vacantist issue. Not long afterward, Howard
Walsh became godfather to the Matatics' seventh child, Angelica Rose, and Keep
the Faith began to distribute Gerry's superb lectures on Sacred Scripture.
Father Harrison kindly issued the endorsement I quote above, and Roger McCaffrey
wrote to say that he was going to keep Gerry on his national syndicated radio
show, "Where Catholics Meet."

In short, on May 20, 1995 we met with Gerry as his brothers in the Faith,
dialogued with him in charity, addressed his concerns, and went on in Catholic
fellowship from there. What a pity Mr. Keating could not see his way clear to
doing the same.

The Demand for an Interview

On June 8, 1995 I wrote to Mr. Keating, this time as Gerry's attorney, to
request on Gerry's behalf that Keating do what his own contributor Father
Harrison, his own friend Roger McCaffrey and all the others had done on May
20th - discuss Gerry's views at length with Gerry, one brother to
another, and listen, really listen, to his side of the story before writing any
more articles about him.

I demanded that in justice Mr. Keating retract his still utterly unproven
charge that Gerry is a sad example of schism and heresy, and retract as well all
of the other false allegations which had appeared in his magazine. And I
emphatically reminded Mr. Keating of his apparently forgotten moral obligation
to engage in private fraternal correction before issuing any more public
accusations against his fellow Catholic.

Finally, I exercised my duty as a lawyer and told Mr. Keating that my
organization was prepared to sue him for libel, without cost to Gerry and
family, unless he stopped his nonsense and started behaving like a Catholic,
instead of a secular attack-journalist intent on nailing his target with any
"evidence" he could lay his hands on.

Indeed, by this time Keating had already announced in This Rock ["March" 1996
issue, p. 22] a massive investigation of Gerry, involving "the testimony of
several dozen people" and the presentation of quotes from Gerry's "own
words, taken from his own talks and other writings." It struck me that this
undertaking was a most peculiar expenditure of the resources of a non-profit
organization ostensibly dedicated to combating the errors of Protestant sects.

It also struck me as peculiar that Mr. Keating had lined up "dozens of
witnesses" to testify against Gerry, but had yet to interview Gerry himself. As
our online exchange had indicated all too clearly, however, Mr. Keating would
have settled for proof that Gerry had been seen kicking pigeons in the park, if
that is what it took to impeach the man. As it turns out, the "dozens of
witnesses" never came forward. Neither did Mr. Keating ever provide the promised
quotes from Gerry's talks and writings to prove his case.

At any rate, within days of my June 8th letter advising him of the potential
for a libel suit, Mr. Keating finally agreed to offer Gerry an interview to tell
his side of the story. Oddly enough, before the interview was even conducted Mr.
Keating issued the repeated caveat that he did not feel bound to publish any
portion of it. Perhaps he foresaw the result. The interview never appeared in
This Rock. Not a single word of it.

Evidence Suppressed

The interview was conducted by telephone on July 13, 1995. By agreement, I
attended and listened on the speaker phone. Over the next three hours, Gerry
completely demolished Keating's flimsy case against him, roundly refuting every
accusation of heterodoxy by showing either that he does not hold the position
attributed to him by Mr. Keating, or that the position he does hold has already
been expressed by a Pope, a cardinal or a major theologian in good standing with
the Church.

So pathetically inadequate was Mr. Keating's theological case, that he
attempted to cross-examine Gerry instead on some laughably trivial matters
regarding the conduct of his apostolate, or his recollection of years-old
conversations and business dealings with others which he was not prepared to
discuss, since he had thought the interview would pertain to his theological
views.

For example, Keating asked Gerry if he had ever received an employment offer
from the aforementioned Bishop of Peoria, and Gerry replied that yes, he had,
whereupon Keating declared with an air of triumph that the Chancery office in
the Diocese of Peoria had informed him that it had no record of such an offer.
But Mr. Keating had not dug very deeply: In Gerry's own files are two letters,
signed by the Bishop, in which he recites his "offer" and then his "best offer"
to Gerry for the position of Director of Apologetics and Evangelization in the
Diocese, specifying salary and benefits. ( As I've already noted, this was the
very position Keating had recommended Gerry not be given.)

In short, Gerry handed Mr. Keating his head during the July 13th interview. I
know, because I heard the entire three-hour session. But the reader need not
take my word for it: Consider instead the salient fact that Keating has refused
to publish even an excerpt from it in This Rock.

Mr. Keating has also refused to publish any of the dozen faxes and letters
Gerry has sent him, defending his views against Keating's charges and demanding
the right of reply. Likewise, no letter to the editor defending Gerry has ever
appeared in This Rock, to my knowledge, although it is certain that Mr. Keating
received letters like the one from David Flores, noted above.

However, Keating did make two passing references to the interview in two
subsequent stories in This Rock (without actually quoting anything Gerry said,
of course), but only in such a way as to bolster his ongoing false presentation
of Gerry's views. Consider the following: During the July 13th interview the
following exchange occurred on the issue of sede vacantism:

Keating: Do you believe that John Paul II was a
validly elected Pope?

Matatics: Of course.

Keating: Do you believe he is still Pope as of
today?

Matatics: Yes. I've never taught anything to the
contrary, Karl, again contrary to the insinuation that you have attempted to
make in print.

Keating: Would you say the same thing of Paul VI,
John Paul I and John XXIII, that they were all valid Popes throughout their
reigns?

Matatics: Of course, Karl.

In the "June" issue of This Rock, which appeared weeks after the July 13th
interview, Mr. Keating wrote as if this exchange had never occurred, falsely
summarizing the interview this way: "Mr. Matatics told me during a recent
interview that he no longer plans to teach at the new seminary, but he has not
forthrightly rejected sede vcantism or the fringe groups that endorse the theory
. . ." [p. 19]

Notice how Keating creates the false impression that during the interview
Gerry waffled on the current papacy by not rejecting the theory of sede
vacantism (which no Catholic is obliged to do). But Keating completely conceals
from his readers the most pertinent part of the interview, wherein Gerry affirms
unequivocally, under direct questioning by Keating himself, that John Paul II is
our Pope - which he had never denied in the first place!

Concerning Keating's reference to the "new seminary," during the July 13th
interview Gerry told Keating quite emphatically that (as I have already noted)
he would not be lecturing at Father Sanborn's seminary in Michigan: "Karl, I
can save you a lot of time here. I am not teaching at that seminary. The
brochure was done without my advance knowledge of it . . . I found the wording
of the text of the brochure to be outrageous and certainly let him [Father
Sanborn] know that I was unwilling to be a part of the faculty. And he felt
exactly the same way . ."

Here is how Keating reported Gerry's statement in the "July/August 1995"
issue of This Rock (which appeared in December 1995): "In a July 13
telephone interview with the staff of This Rock, Matatics said he thought he
would end up not teaching at Dolan's seminary . . ."

Need I say more?

I hope the readers of this letter remember one thing, if they remember
nothing else about my testimony: that Mr. Keating first failed to conduct, then
deliberately suppressed, then falsely described in passing, his own in-depth
interview of Gerry Matatics - when it is Gerry Matatics he has been writing
about and speaking about for the past two years.

What manner of journalist is this? I will tell you: a journalist with an axe
to grind, who does away with the inconvenient facts that would blunt his shiny
axe-blade; a journalist who has abandoned even the minimal standards of fairness
which govern secular news publications, let alone a publication which claims to
give us "Catholic Answers."

"Gerry Has No Forum"

Shortly after the July 13th interview I telephoned Mr. Keating at Catholic
Answers, hoping to bring this controversy to an amicable conclusion, given
Gerry's good account of himself during the interview and the positive results of
the May 20th meeting.

Mr. Keating would have none of it. In a reprise of our earlier on-line
exchange, I challenged Mr. Keating to show precisely where Gerry Matatics had
departed from the faith - on the question of Feeneyism, for example. Keating
replied, as the outrage welled up within me, that it was his "impression" that
Gerry is a "Feeneyite." His impression! After all this time, and no proof
whatever, he was still insisting upon his "impression" that Gerry had erred
against the Faith.

I told Keating, in essence, that I was fed up with his conduct, and that
Gerry and I would take our case to the public if he would not do the right thing
and retract his charges. Keating's reply was very revealing: "Gerry has no
forum."

This is the reply of a moral bully, whose only concern is to be sure that his
victim cannot strike back with any effect: Gerry has no forum, whereas I, Mr.
Karl Keating, have the bully pulpit of This Rock magazine, from which I have
banned any reply by Mr. Matatics. That was Mr. Keating's cold calculation of the
amount of justice he would render in this case.

A Well-Deserved Rebuke

But it is even worse than this. Having falsely accused Gerry Matatics of
heresy and schism before the entire Catholic Church, and having refused to allow
him the right of reply in This Rock, Mr. Keating had the gall to find it
intolerable that Gerry would defend himself, even once, in public.

I am referring to a question and answer session after one of Gerry's talks at
a major Catholic church in Manhattan in December 1995. During that session I
asked Gerry to respond to Keating's charges, about which many in the audience
were wondering. Gerry did so admirably, just as he had done during the July 13th
interview Mr. Keating has hidden from his public.

Mr. Keating listened to a tape of Gerry's remarks, then wrote a letter to the
pastor of the church in which he petulantly protested that Gerry had
"engaged in a deliberate and grotesque falsehood concerning my own
actions" and that "hardly a word he spoke was truthful." He
concluded by imperiously informing the pastor - one of America's most
distinguished Churchmen - of his "keen disappointment" that "the
name of your parish was used to promote Gerry's deceptions." As he has
throughout this controversy, Keating failed to supply any evidence to support
his charge that Gerry engaged in lies and deceptions: no quotes, no particulars,
nothing - just the accusations.

The pastor's reply to Mr. Keating's juvenile outburst shows his instant grasp
of the mentality at work in the little kingdom Mr. Keating has created for
himself: "Have you lost your grip on the larger world? You imply,
astonishingly that because you and Mr. Matatics do not get along. . . that I
should have assumed that he is wrong and you right when, even in the recent
letter you wrote, you did not mention the subject of dispute, much less why Mr.
Matatics is wrong. Grow up. Fight your battles and indeed win them if you can.
But contain your disappointment that the whole world is not afloat in your
teacup." [my emphasis]

This rebuke did not sit well with Mr. Keating, who had clearly expected that
it would be Gerry - the sad example of schism and heresy - who would be rebuked,
not he, the President of Catholic Answers. Mr. Keating let his resentment simmer
for nearly a year and a half, before publicly musing about it in the latest
issue of This Rock, where he describes the great controversy between Kingsley
and Newman, likens his situation to Newman's, and publicly ponders what to do,
what to do, about the great wrong "Mr. Z" - meaning Gerry - had inflicted
upon him "two Decembers ago": "That said, how is one to move beyond
this feeling of defensiveness? How does one decide to 'turn the other cheek,'
and when is it "a time to speak"? This is a matter of prudential judgment I
think, so there can be no hard and fast rule, no mathematical formula into which
one stuffs data and out of which is spit an infallible answer. Part of the
measure must be the extent of the perceived injury . . .," etc., etc., etc.

This is truly astonishing stuff: Having falsely condemned Gerry - excuse me,
"Mr. Z" - as a heretic and a schismatic before tens of thousands of people,
Keating publicly muses some two years later about whether he should be turning
the other cheek! - and this in response to one attempt by Gerry to defend
himself during a Q & A session before 200 people in the basement of a
Manhattan church! Where indeed is Mr. Keating's grip on the larger world?

Your Own Advice, Mr. Keating

It is sublime poetic justice that Mr. Keating's conduct in this affair is
finally condemned by his own words. In the August 1990 issue of This Rock, Mr.
Keating chided someone for, of all things, recklessly applying the labels
"schismatic" and "heretic" to a fellow Catholic - namely, renowned British
traditionalist Michael Davies. Mr. Keating's advice to the errant author of
those calumnies is a ringing indictment of his own actions today: "The
operative principle is this: If you want to show someone is wrong (or evil or
nuts), just quote him. He'll bury himself. Don't throw nasty labels at him.
Labels are like boomerangs. They have an odd way of coming back at you . . .The
lesson for apologetics: avoid wild labels and the relentless piling up of
accusations. If you want to prove something, no matter what that something might
be, try to confine yourself to quotations. Let the other guy dig his own grave.
If you don't, you'll just dig yours." [p.5] [my emphasis]

If I have shown anything in the course of this apologia, it is that Mr.
Keating has failed miserably to follow his own advice: He has applied wild
labels to Gerry Matatics, piled on the accusations, and failed to confine
himself to quotations from the writings or speeches of the accused. On the
contrary, Mr. Keating has suppressed quotations from Gerry's preaching and
teaching which contradict his case - not to mention the whole of a three-hour
interview concerning Gerry's theological views, which are precisely the matter
at issue!

But there is something else I hope I have made clear, no matter how the
reader views Mr. Keating's many accusations: Even if every accusation Mr.
Keating made had been true, he has failed drastically in his obligation in
charity to engage in private fraternal correction rather than public
condemnation of his brother. That Mr. Keating's charges against Gerry Matatics
are false only adds calumny to the objective failure of charity which I believe
is manifest in Mr. Keating's conduct.

Rather than take my word for it, I ask the reader to consider, in comparison,
the good example provided by those who heard Keating's accusations, listened to
Gerry's side of the story, then came to Gerry's assistance rather than casting
him into outer darkness: Father Brian Harrison, who lent his written endorsement
to Gerry, though he had no obligation to do so; Father Arnaud Devillers,
Regional Superior of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, who hired Gerry to
teach Sacred Scripture at the Fraternity's seminary; Father John Perricone, who
has featured Gerry as the guest speaker of his important organization,
Christefidelis, in Manhattan; Al Matt, editor of The Wanderer, who accepted
Father Harrison's endorsement and allowed Gerry access once again to the pages
of his venerable newspaper, so that Gerry could promote his apostolate; Roger
McCaffrey, who stood by Gerry and kept him on his radio show; and Howard Walsh,
who became the godfather of Gerry and Leslie's seventh child and promotes
Gerry's work.

There are others who have helped Gerry and his family weather this storm. All
of these good Samaritans have one thing in common: a lively sense of charity
toward their fellow Catholic, which led them to presume the best, not the worst,
about Gerry, and to act at all times with due regard for what St. Thomas taught
us is a man's most precious earthly possession: his good name.

As for Mr. Keating, does anyone seriously contend - could Mr. Keating himself
stand before Our Lord and say - that charity has supplied the motive for his
actions throughout this affair?

A Challenge to Mr. Keating

In the very article in which he depicts himself as Cardinal Newman redux, Mr.
Keating quotes Newman's famous challenge to Kingsley either to prove his
infamous accusation or retract it: "You have made a monstrous charge against me;
direct, distinct, public. You are bound to prove it as directly, as distinctly,
as publicly - or to own you can't." [This Rock, January '97, p. 15]

On February 16, 1995, Mr. Keating issued a public accusation which makes
Kingsley's "monstrous charge" look like high praise. Mr. Keating said that Gerry
Matatics, a man who has dedicated his life to explaining and defending his
beloved Catholic faith, is "a sad example of how schism does lead to heresy
very quickly," and a "pied piper" leading other Catholics out of
the Church. He could hardly have injured Gerry more if he had shot him through
the head.

Mr. Keating tells you that he stands by "every word" he has said about Gerry
Matatics. Of course, he tells you this on the telephone, where it is very easy
to "stand by" a libel. But will Mr. Keating "stand by" his monstrous charge in a
forum where his "evidence," such as it is, can be subjected to scrutiny? Will he
prove his charge as directly, as distinctly and as publicly as he made it - or
own that he cannot?

So far, Mr. Wells, the answer is no. So far, Mr. Keating has refused the same
challenge which Newman issued to Kingsley, and which Kingsley at least feigned
to accept. And the reason Mr. Keating flees from public debate with Gerry
Matatics is, I submit, the very same reason he concealed his interview of Gerry
from the readers of This Rock magazine: Gerry will trounce Mr. Keating in any
fair fight.

For what it is worth, however, I issue the challenge once again: Come
forward, Mr. Keating, and confront the man you have been accusing for so long
without giving him an opportunity to reply. Gerry is ready for the encounter
which you owe to him in justice. Name the time and the place, and I will finance
your appearance there - all expenses paid. Appear and state your evidence,
subjecting it to the crucible of cross-examination. Following your own advice in
This Rock magazine, show us the quotes from the teaching and preaching of Gerry
Matatics which prove that he is a "sad example of how schism does lead to
heresy very quickly" - and, just as you have advised others, confine
yourself to those quotes, avoiding the "wild labels' and "relentless piling up
of accusations" you profess to deplore. Or, if you find you cannot carry the
burden of proof which you have prescribed for others, then by all means retract
your charges just as publicly as you have made them, and apologize to Gerry, his
wife, and their seven children for the havoc you have wreaked upon their lives.

Mr. Wells, I have no reason to expect that Mr. Keating will ever rise to this
challenge. The last time I issued it, only two weeks ago, Mr. Keating replied by
e-mail with his newest excuse: that if he debated Gerry, why, Gerry would only
try to justify himself. Justify himself! Imagine that! Mr. Keating is like some
bizarre assailant who repeatedly punches a man in the face, while sniffing that
he cannot descend to fisticuffs with him!

Nevertheless, we await Mr. Keating's reply to this open letter, which is
being sent to him today. I should think that ten days will suffice to make it
clear to everyone that the challenge will be ducked once again.

Meanwhile, Mr. Keating ought at least to recognize his obligation in both
charity and justice to refrain from inflicting further damage on Gerry's good
name: He should delete immediately from the Catholic Answers Website all of the
libelous articles he has written against Gerry, which he is still telling people
to download for "the truth" about Gerry; he should cease speaking ill of Gerry
on the telephone to people who have offered him speaking engagements or other
patronage; he should tacitly concede, by his silence, that perhaps he was
mistaken, that he overreached in what he said, that it would be wrong to "stand
by" his accusations despite all evidence to the contrary.

Let us pray, Mr. Wells, that even if Mr. Keating never renders justice to
Gerry Matatics and his family, he will at least do them no more harm.

(1) Gerry's misgivings about the ICEL translation are, of course, entirely
within the realm of Catholic orthodoxy. For example, a recent article by
Professsor William J. Sullivan in the venerable Homiletic and Pastoral Review
(whose editor, Father Kenneth Baker, S.J. sits on the Advisory Board of this
Association) identified over 103 major errors in ICEL's American translation of
the Mass of Paul VI. [Homiletic and Pastoral Review, May 1995] Prof. Sullivan
concluded that: "[T]he [American] Novus Ordo is not merely badly translated, but
translated in a doctrinally unsound manner. [I]t is highly probable that the
mistranslations are a deliberate attempt to subvert the Church in America in a
modernist direction." [Id. at p. 49] [my emphasis]

It is most telling that in the aborted 1988 protocol of reconciliation with
the Vatican, the Society of St. Pius X was required to affirm only the doctrinal
soundness of the normative Latin text of the new Mass, not the ICEL
translations. At any rate, Gerry Matatics has never denied the essential
validity of even the ICEL translation; so that Keating's report is a gross
falsification of Gerry's actual view on the new Mass.

(2) I believe that Mr. Keating is now quibbling that Gerry does not affirm
what Keating rather idiosyncratically terms salvation by "implicit faith in
Christ" - a phrase which appears nowhere in the entire 2,000 year history of the
Magisterium, but which Mr. Keating insists is the teaching of Vatican II. Here
Keating seems to have confused the possibility of an implicit desire to join the
Church sufficing for salvation, with the supernatural virtue of faith, which
must always be explicit, as the Holy Office itself made clear in the famous 1949
letter regarding the Father Feeney controversy. Indeed, St. Thomas teaches that
one must have an explicit faith in at least the Trinity in order to be saved,
and that God can supply this faith even to pagans by an interior illumination.

In any case, the Magisterium itself has never spoken definitively about the
content of the explicit faith one must have in order to be saved, so it is
absurd, and quite unjust, for Keating to demand that Gerry must affirm not only
baptism of desire on the part of catechumens and baptism of blood, but also
"implicit faith in Christ."

Mr. Keating has also failed to bring to the attention of the readers of This
Rock documentation I sent him on the written permission which the "Feeneyite"
community in the Diocese of Worcester, Mass. has received from the Diocese to
teach and preach its (according to Keating) "heretical" strict view on the
salvation of non-Catholics. The permission was based on advice from the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican. According to a letter
from the Judicial Vicar of the Diocese of Worcester, dated May 4, 1988: "It
would seem that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith holds the
doctrine ["no salvation outside the Church"] to have been defined and
consequently definitive. It is the theological interpretation and speculation
which they see as problematical. In our discussions with the Congregation it
seemed rather clear that proponents of a strict interpretation of the doctrine
should be given the same latitude for teaching and discussion as those with a
more liberal view." [my emphasis]

Mr. Keating seems to have great difficulty understanding what the Holy See,
and Gerry Matatics, understand: that the salvation of non-Catholics is a
problematical area in sacred theology, that the Feeneyites are not "heretics,"
even if they might be in error, and that they are entitled to teach and discuss
their strict interpretation without being condemned by Catholics, such as Mr.
Keating, who hold a more liberal view.

(3) Mr. Keating has read this newsletter but has failed to mention it in his
later articles implying that Gerry is a crypto-sede vacantist. In fact, he has
failed to mention a whole collection of anti-schismatic statements collected
from Gerry's recent lectures brought to his attention in a letter dated April 6,
1995 from David Flores, a concerned reader of This Rock, who concluded:
"Frankly, Karl, I do not see how anyone can read the aforequoted comments
and conclude that Gerry Matatics is a schismatic or even that he is consciously
promoting schism."

(Please note the excerpts from Mr. Flores Letter in the Appendix section.
This was NOT part of the original letter but provided by Mr. Flores via the
internet from the CTAC e-mail list)

(4) Gerry had also been extremely imprudent in telling a sede vacantist
priest, Father Donald Sanborn, that if he ever did embrace the sede vacantist
position, he would be willing to lecture in Sacred Scripture at an irregular
seminary Father Sanborn was founding in Michigan. This resulted in the creation
of a seminary brochure, featuring Gerry's photograph, which Gerry did not
authorize and which had to be recalled when Gerry informed Father Sanborn that
he was not persuaded to Father Sanborn's view and could not teach at the
seminary.

Appendix (not part of the original
Letter)

Rich:

I see that my April 6, 1995 letter to Karl Keating is quoted in footnote 3 of
Chris Ferrara's letter. The letter states that my letter gave examples of
certain anti-schismatic comments that Gerry Matatics had made in previous talks.
The talks were at the November 4-5, 1994 Niagara Conference ("Apocalypse Now,"
Biblical Foundations tape) and the October 28, 1994 Roman Forum ("Burning while
Rome Fiddles," Keep the Faith tape). I included excerpts from the talks in my
letter. Below is an excerpt from my April 6, 1995 letter.

David Flores

12306 Brinnon Street

El Monte, California 91732

Karl Keating, Editor

This Rock

P.O. Box 17490

San Diego, California 92177

Dear Karl:

...Gerry's Niagara Conference statements stressed the importance of
disaffected "traditional" Catholics resisting the temptation to become "lone
ranger" Catholics. Gerry stated: "That is a serious mistake. That can at
least border on a schismatic mentality. What we have to do, and this is a very
complex and delicate razor's edge to walk and I am not saying we all do it
perfectly. We have to - on the one hand - we cannot be accomplices in evil in an
apostasy. We must clearly say, `No, I do not promote or participate in this or
that,' when statements are coming out saying, `This is fine,' or 'We are going
to rebuild the Temple and Jews, Muslims, and Christians are only going to be
worshiping together in a great ecumenical religion by the end of the century.'
We cannot go along with that kind of thing. We have got to call that what it
is."

Gerry urged disaffected Catholics to work within the Church for renewal and
restoration of faith and to help people to be truly Catholic. Gerry explained:
"Let's say that your local parish is given to the most outlandish acts of
idolatry in its Masses and so forth: You have got new age religion being spouted
from the pulpit; you have got witches consorting in the sanctuary - dancing
around, and drawing pentagrams on the ground. You cannot go to Mass there,
obviously. But it would be a mistake - in my opinion - to say, `I myself am
going to act like the magisterium and sort of cut and consign to condemnation
all those people off.' They are not dead yet. Death is definitely reigning there
and the Devil is reigning. But there are still a lot of people that are sort of
entrapped in that. They don't realize, they feel like its their duty to be
there, to be part of that and so forth, and we need to be kind of rescuing
people (and maybe even the parish itself is not just hopelessly lost) and
[inaudible slur of words] be pulling people out of it. But rather maybe there
can be repentance and renewal and restoration there. There can be repudiation of
such blasphemy and sacrilege and the Mass can be properly be offered there
again, and true Catholic teaching can be occurring there again. That would be
the ideal! Obviously! For the local parish to repent and become 'Catholic` again
(which is what it claims on its name, on its sign). That's what we want! So if
that's all - we should be very slow to give up on, or wash our hands of the
local parish situation - if there is something salvageable there. If we can
bring it back around by the grace of God then we should certainly expend our
every effort to do so because there are people there for whom Christ died - whom
he loves, and wants to save - and bring them around to the point where they are
truly Catholic in their thought, in their worship and in their moral
conduct."

...Gerry made the following comments at the October 28, 1994 Roman Forum:
"I think we have to be very careful here while not wanting to fall into
heresy or schism, which we must avoid. Our first and most fundamental ambition
every day of our life must be to be a faithful Catholic - no more and no less -
and to avoid the extreme errors that will plunge us out of the Church either to
the left or to the right. At the same time--given the confusion given the fact
that the shepherds have been somewhat struck in some sense, that the sheep are
somewhat scattered (as Jeremiah predicted, as happened during the life of our
Lord when he was arrested), I think that we should be very charitable and very
careful to avoid too quickly writing people off who might take, on the one hand
either a more benign view of the recent papacy, or on the other hand, a more
critical view of the recent papacy than we personally might do. My view is
personally somewhere in the middle, but I want to remain open out of a sense of
desire to be humbled and continually learning - to people both to my left and
somewhat to my right as well - friends, writers, speakers, as well who take a
softer line or a harder line. I am making a plea here simply for us to listen to
each other, to exercise the virtue of patience, openness and tolerance, rather
than saying, `Well, those people - that's it! Don't even listen to them! Don't
read their literature!' or `This people' or 'that people,' they are too soft!'
`They are too hard!' We need to pray for each other that we can work together
because there are these differences and not only on the papacy but also on all
other aspects of the crisis as well."

...Frankly Karl, I do not see how anyone can read the aforequoted comments
and conclude that Gerry Matatics is a schismatic or even that he is consciously
promoting schism...